Matt Wade has a great tip posted over on Codewalkers.com about a book going on sale that those just starting out with PHP might want to look into:

My friend Jason Gilmore is selling his popular book (which I also happen to be the tech reviewer of), "Beginning PHP and MySQL 5, Second Edition" via his company website for just $26.99 + $3.50 S/H, which to my knowledge is the lowest price anywhere.

You can check out more about the book and get the full details on how to order from this post over on Jason's blog. Offer is only available only to U.S. residents due to cost restrictions.

On the ITBusinessEdge site, there's a quick column from Lora Bentley looking at things from the other side of the Zend/Microsoft story - Microsoft's.

She mentions the "about face" that Microsoft has seemingly made when it comes to Open Source projects, specifically the Zend deal:

As a DigitalJournal writer pointed out yesterday, the deal makes great business sense for Microsoft, given that PHP runs more than 2 million Web sites and the software company's servers and tools business contributed one-fourth of its total revenue in the latest quarter.

You can get complete information regarding the collaboration from the Zend website.

According to this new press release, PerlCoders and PHP Labs have joined forces and become one and, to share the love with others, they're offering discounts on their offerings.

Over the last week, PerlCoders and PHP Labs have merged to offer even more professional scripts to their clients. To celebrate this merger, they are now offering a one-time special promotion for webmasters, which can save them over $300. As a small incentive for new members, PHP Labs is also offering free installation for the first script of your choice.

The press release goes on to talk about what each is bringing to the table and what they're offering from now on. The $300 promotion goes towards a membership for the site, giving you access to all 44 scripts without paying extra. Examples of the scripts include GalleryMaker, ProxyCheck, FileMailer, and CashMail. You can get more information from the promotion's page on their website.